"This Is Just One Voice" Performed March 27th 2015 at Studio 7

After many days of programming and practicing (+50 hours all together), I designed and learned to play a new instrument in Max/MSP. Its debut performance took place on March 27th 2015 at Studio 7. Thank you to all who came out to the performance. In this post, I will share the recording of the performance, and discuss the design of the instrument.

First of all, here is the performance:


The instrument's design is relatively straightforward from a macroscopic perspective. My voice is taken into the computer through a microphone where it is processed by three main sections before being distributed to four speakers which surround the audience.

The first stage, labelled "Live Recording and Loop Playback" is an Ableton Live set controlled by a grid controller. At this stage I am able to record loops such as the opening "this is just one voice", the singing in the middle, and the final "I invited people to abuse my gravity". This is the only processor using premade software; when I started the project, I imagined that I would be recording and rearranging words and sentences on the fly to make new poetry from one recorded original. As I started practicing with the instrument, however, I realized that this was fairly uninspiring; simply speaking the derived poem would have the same semantic content, with the additional prosody of my voice, and it was nightmarishly difficult to keep track of which word was associated with which button on my grid controller. Ultimately, I think the performance was improved by my decision not to extensively use this stage of the instrument.

The second stage is labelled "Frequency Shifted Delay with Feedback". This processor has a very dynamic gestural sound, and adds an inharmonic electronic quality to my voice. It's controlled by a QuNexus keyboard device which sends three streams of data to the computer based on which note I press, how much pressure I am applying to each note, and the position of my finger on the key. By varying the way I touch the key, I can elicit sharp attacks or steady drones from this stage. As with all stages of the instrument however, it doesn't make any sound unless I speak/sing into it from the microphone.

The third stage is the granular delay. This complex processor chops the incoming stream of vocal sounds from the microphone into tiny fragments, called grains, each of which has slightly different properties which are stochastically generated from within ranges set on my tablet computer. I used this processor in the performance to generate a variety of textures from my voice. The sound of the line "when many voices speak at once" near the beginning of the performance is a typical granular sound effect. One of the parameters of each grain is which speaker to play from; with four speakers to choose from, the output of the granular delay really enveloped the audience, who sat in the middle of the four speakers.

Finally, stages two and three form a feedback loop, each one feeding into the other by an amount set on my tablet computer. I didn't use this feature of my instrument much in the performance, but it offers some interesting possibilities to iteratively process the sound of one processor using the other.

The first performance with this instrument was a success, and I look forward to continuing its development. Both of the processors have room for improvement without changing their function considerably, and as well there is the possibility to add additional processors in the future. Programming aside, I have a lot of room to hone my playing technique with this instrument. I hope to also use it in collaboration with other vocalists and poets, and potentially also with instrumentalists and other laptop musicians. While I developed the instrument intending to use it with my own voice, its design is such that it could operate with any audio signal, be it a mic'd acoustic source, or any other electronic source.

Thank you to Thomas Christie for sharing the March blog with me, thank you to Studio 7 welcoming me into such a great performance space, and thank you so much to the FARR for the opportunity to work on this project and document it on this blog. It has been a joy to discover Max/MSP during this project, which I was only able to afford thanks to the residency honorarium. As well, it was fascinating to interact with the Reading Room users to develop the poetry, which was one of the most important aspects of the performance at Studio 7. I couldn't have accomplished any of this without the Reading Room.

My gratitude,

Travis West

Plant Sounds Pt. II

PROJECT 
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Plant Sounds Pt. II

60 Hz and a little something extra

 

Interfacing with the plant is proving to be more difficult than anticipated. While the current prototype was picking up some kind of signal, there was a considerable amount of 60 Hz interference. This is because the plant virtually acts as antennae. There was a small, irregular signal overlaid the 60 Hz, but we couldn't conclude if it was noise interference or the plant. Nicely enough, interacting with the plant did cause reactions in the collected signal, mostly in the form of amplitude variation. Although these tests weren't a complete victory, it did bring to light some potential fixes.

60 Hz PROBLEM

To rectify the issue of 60 Hz interference, we may go with an instrumentation amplifier. A Faraday cage would be ideal to isolate the electronics and the plant, but then the installation would just be a box. It just wouldn't be the same.

ELECTRODE PROBLEM 
The electrodes we are currently using are copper-based and super ghetto (soldered by yours truly). Switching to silver-chloride electrodes may prove to be prosperous — as almost all biological electrode systems use Ag/AgCl electrodes (oops... my bad). Ideally, I would have micro-electrodes capable of measuring intracellular ionization. 

PLAN B

Wheatstone Bridge

We have started to develop the alternative circuit that would measure micro-voltages with a different approach. The new method detects a micro-voltage across a varying resistance of the organism within a Wheatstone bridge. The data will be collected and output through Arduino code. Max/MSP (the software being used for the soundscape) has the capacity to read, format, and interpret the serial data. In this way, it will be a mixture of 'audification' and 'sonification'. Charles Dodge is well known for working in this style (see attached video). 

Today we will finalize the schematic and decide on the required electronics. There may be some difficulty augmenting the existing circuit with the Wheatstone bridge, but Marc is a bona fide champion in this regard. ONWARDS & UPWARDS!

Charles Dodge — Earth's Magnetic Field (1970)

Lots of Love,
Thom

(more info on sonification)

Plant Sounds

PROJECT 
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Plant Sounds

The plant kingdom is, at first glance, one of silence, where these stationary beings seem static and uneventful. Internally, however, plants are rampant with activity. Their molecular factories turning water, light, CO², minerals, and so on, into the air we breathe, the nourishment we eat, the medicines we need, and the energy we burn and thrive off of. Our dependency upon these microscopic factories is clear. But rarely do we contemplate a plant's capability to sense and react, and even less so do we consider them capable of generating electrical signals.

Plant Sounds is a navigation and investigation of the interior dialogue of a plant. By translating the electrical micro-voltage fluctuations generated by flora, the signals can be used in the production of a soundscape. This soundscape is the direct outcome of the plant’s functioning, unique to it’s circumstance and external stimulus, as interpreted by a custom-made electronic instrument. 

The viewer should be able to directly interact with the plant through physical touch and vicariously affect the produced soundscape. These fluctuations are processed and sonified through a computer-based program to create complex and unusual sonorities. In effect, the viewer is confronted with the awareness of a plant by the conjured auditory responses. The plant would no longer seem docile and silent to our presence, allowing us a glimpse into it’s inner-workings.  

Plant Sensor Prototype Mk. I

The largest undertaking of this project is interfacing with the plant. Marc-Alexandre Chan, a masters student of electrical engineering at Concordia, has been pivotal in developing a prototype device capable of measuring and capturing these miniscule signals. Without him and the resources of the IEEE on campus, the project would be nearly impossible to realize. 

It's been quite a few weeks of working together to reach the current stage of the prototype. Along the way I've been noticing that engineers like Marc are artists in their own right. Designing the prototype requires a creativity and logic that is truly commendable, and turns concepts and ideas into something tangible.

Marc running tests like a boss

The device, as it stands, is a highly sensitive, extremely low-noise amplifier. The initial theory is to connect to the plant using two copper electrodes with a conductive gel; one electrode connected to a leaf, the other connected to the soil and roots. This signal is then amplified and the resulting information is sent to an audio card to be converted from analog signal to digital. Once converted, I can begin messing with the signal to create some kind of sweet, sweet soundscape.

Because the electric signal of a plant is almost non-existent, potential noise interference is the largest contender to deal with. With our current tests, the performance of Prototype Mk. I has been more than adequate for the intended audio result. However, the plant itself has yet to be tested with the current prototype. Once the plant is all hooked up, it will be a real treat to see what kind of frequencies/sounds it generates! Might lead to a strange world of plant-preferred musical scales or compositional styles or some static, unchanging sonic realm... well... who knows?

The week to come will be busy with tests and trouble-shooting. Schematics will be made available once there is a certainty that the prototype is capable of capturing the plant signal. Check out the video to gain a little insight into the bizarre and not-so-different-than-us 

world of plants.

Lots of Love,
Thomas



— for more of my work, check these —

soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/thomchristie

instagram:  @the_nerve https://instagram.com/the_nerve/

Practice Session Recording and Description of the Instrument

It's been splendid, but my residency at the FARR is officially over. Thanks to Danielle Sanderson, Serry Malik, Sophia Borowska, Emma Sise, Emma Ligntstone, and Emilie West for interacting with the display, and I'm sorry if I misspelled any of your names. The poetry that has been inspired by these people, and anyone else who interacted with the display but didn't sign the guest book will be a vital part of the performances for this project as it moves forward.

While my residency is over, my project continues. I'll be performing at the last Studio 7 this year, and I invite everyone to come and enjoy the show; there are always a ton of great performances by music, theatre, and dance students, and other emerging artists, and I will be playing the instrument I'm developing for this project. For those of you who can't make it, I will be uploading a recording of my performance shortly afterward.

Until then I will be continuing to actively develop the instrument, practicing with it, and playing with the poetry which I've written over the course of this month. Here is a demonstration of the instrument in its current form:





In this iteration of the instrument, which I consider to be very early still, I've used free VST sound effects in Ableton Live to process my voice in four stages: I record chopped up bits of my speaking which are played through a pitch shifter, a frequency shifter with delay, and a granular delay. The algorithm is very simple, and all controls are performed manually with a Launchpad and an iPad. I'm currently working to bring this basic functionality into Max MSP, at which point I will be able to program control structures based on analysis of the spoken voice, as well as controlling sound parameters manually.

At the beginning of this project, I thought that the focus would be on the performance, but I've realized this month that the design of the performance instrument is actually where the bulk of the work lies. Thanks so much to the Fine Arts Reading Room for this great opportunity to learn, and I look forward to posting once more this April with another sound recording.

Flying Fraility and Other Poems

Several brave individuals have interacted with my display and made poetry from my poetry. Here are the poems from the second week of my residency:

Here is my own new poem, inspired by some of the poetry made by FARR users, and made only from my original writing:

I invited people to abuse my gravity
weight and meaning smudges my ears
This one voice like
many voices
is mine
but the I tends to blur
semantic structures segregate
reading sentences and nonsense
this one voice deafens me
significance dissipate silently
many voices smudges me telepathically
fighting me
sound waves dripping frequencies
I dissipate silently

It's been fascinating to see the poetry others have written using only my words, and seeing the words from that new perspective. Here is a completely new poem inspired by the original, and its derivatives:

I invited people to abuse my gravity
My one voice's meaning
merely magnetic words clinging to a feeling
so many voices coming stealing
my words
reeling
where is I in this sliding shifting mess of readings?
my voice turned to so many voices' dealings
my magnetic words' inverted polarity
the I is dissipating in semantic disparity
like any word dropping unavoidably
its meaning falls automatically
not to earth's but to orbiting gravities
every body with a spiralling trail
its own comets tale
every word a flying frailty
falling into atmospheres of aliens
unknown memories and experiences
every word abused by foreign gravity
meaning something I never meant

Here is a picture of the display after I randomly shuffled everything around on Saturday:

Thanks for reading!